Clicker Training - is it NH?

[Kate F.]

What does anyone think? Here, and in many other forums etc. CT is listed under "Natural Horsemanship", but surely nothing is more un-natural than a clicker? It may be gentle, it may work in many instances - but natural?

For me the essence of natural horsemanship is using what nature put there to communicate with the horse - i.e. its natural insincts, bevahiour and the way of learning that is uses among other horses in the herd situation. Horses communicate primarily through body-language - and that is the basis of natural horsemanship.

Clicker training is about as unnatural as you can get. It's based on connecting the clicker to a food treat, and the food treat to the desired behaviour. A food treat is itself unnatural for a horse. Horses are grazer/browsers and food does not play a social role, as it does for hunter/gatherers - eg dogs. Dogs, cats, birds etc. hunt/gather for their young, their family, their pack - but horses just eat what's in front of them. The whole idea of one giving food to another is alien to the horse. (of course they enjoy it, but it's not a natural "horse" concept.) The way one horse shows another approval is by switching off the request. One horse gets too close to another - the first (or rather higher ranking horse) displays "get out of my space" postures until the lower ranking horse goes away, then the posturing stops. Stopping the request at the right time is therefore a key element of NH. This may or may not be reinforced with stroking and petting, or even food treats - but the main thing is stopping asking at the right time.

I had sort of put CT in a catergory of pseudo NH and was trying not to get too irritated by it. Then I read the post here by Intouch saying it can teach the person to notice the small try and be more aware of what the horse is feeling. Anything that does that can't be all bad! :-)

Perhaps the clicker is more a prompt for the person - they focus on when to click, then have to stop asking in order to click - and the horse is actually noticing the request stopping, not the click.

Reminds me of the wonderful example of "Clever Hans" - in case you don't know it it's well worth reading! http://www.kbrhorse.net/tra/hans.html

(The end paragraph is mind blowing - I only just found this and must check it out further. Apparently horses and dogs can detect changes in our heartbeats! Does anyone else know more about this study?) Perhaps they're responding to thumps more than clicks!

So can we call CT "natural" because it causes the person to give natural cues to the horse, even when they think the unnatural "click" is the cue? What do others think?

[Yann]

IMHO there's nothing at all 'NH' about the CT and the principles behind it as you point out - however the style of training and ground exercises proposed for use with the clicker by Alexandra Kurland for example are very similar to Kelly / Monty or some of the seven games.

The fact is the clicker can be added on top of any kind of training regime, traditional or otherwise, but obviously the less traditional will be more inclined to have a go with it and marry it to whatever they are doing, so it has tended to get lumped in with the whole NH thing:)

[shirley]

As you know clicker training is about positive reinforcement, than using negative. As people we respond so much quicker and behaviour is changed if is positive in nature. We feel much more positive, a much better sense of wellbeing. It gives us encouragement to keep trying. Where as negative reinforcement leaves us feeling useless, depressed even and unwilling to try.
You do not have to use food for clicker training, the prize element could be a stroke on the forehead, a pat on the side, but as long as it is the same all the time, the horse will gradually understand that this means you are pleased. Just as we have gradually learnt to understand that a dog wagging their tails means they are happy to see us. So you find a common ground on which to communicate with. It is just another way of expressing acceptable and non acceptable behaviour between each other.
Surely using positive reinforcement that is not punishment means
that the bond of trust that any relationship needs is built up far more quickly.

[Kate F.]

Hi Shirley!

Absolutely - punishment has no place in horse training anyway. It means nothing to the horse and is only counter-productive.

I wasn't suggesting anything to do with punishment - simply querying the inclusion of clicker training under natural horsemanship. As you say, the horse can gradually learn than anything from a carrot to a click means it's done the right thing - but my point is that for the horse, it's own way of saying "yes, that's right - well done!" is to release the pressure or request. When the click, carrot or whatever comes after this, it makes an association between the release and the reward - and the reward reinforces that.

However, for the horse, the first signal that it's done the right thing is the release of the request, not the carrot - that's the "natural" signal.

As I mentioned before, if the click is getting the person to release a the right time, it probably doesn't matter anyway! :-))

[Yann]

Negative reinforcement and punishment are not the same thing. For example putting leg pressure on to ask a horse forwards is negative reinforcement as the pressure (negative stimulus) is removed once the horse walks on. The use of leg aids is unlikely to depress your horse (unless you use them wrongly of course:D)

Take your point about training being a much more enjoyable process positive reinforcement is involved though:)